To ensure the quality and relevance of literature that you include in your literature review, remember:
'Literature' can include a range of sources:
When searching for literature, you can use Library Search to identify and locate books, reports, conference proceedings, theses and other resources.
You can determine relevant databases to search for journal articles and conference papers using the "Browse by subject or category" menu on our Databases page.
Some other important databases for literature reviews include:
Your supervisor also may suggest relevant resources and databases.
Please note that you can contact our Librarians who can assist you with refining your search strategy, identify relevant databases and resources, demonstrate database features and functionality, and demonstrate methods for obtaining more obscure resources.
During your literature review you will carry out a number of searches and gather many references - it is easy to lose track of a particular reference, which databases you have searched, which keywords you used, or how you identified a source. It is helpful to keep a search diary, in whatever format you prefer, to record:
Before starting your search, you will need to develop a search strategy. Please see our Develop your research skills pages for guidance before moving on to the Searching databases section below.
You can use the following search tools to search databases for literature on your topic
Databases are the major resource for finding journal articles and have important functionality. If you learn how to use databases effectively, your research will be much more productive and of much higher quality.
For a comprehensive literature search, you will need to use more than one database.
Library Search is the easiest way to search the Library’s print and digital resources from a single search box. It's a quick way to locate items you may already have details about or a useful tool when you need to find high quality resources on a topic.
However, you should use databases rather than Library Search when you need to find comprehensive or specialised information in your subject area.
For more information on how to use Library Search, see:
Google Scholar is not a substitute for databases, but it can be useful. You can set up Google Scholar to source articles from the Murdoch University Library's resources.
Now when you search for articles in Google Scholar, you will see a link to Murdoch to the right in the Results list if the articles are in our collection.
This will make it easier for you to determine the title of the journal the articles or studies are published in.
You can then search Ulrichsweb by the journal title to check if the article is from a peer-review journal.
Many databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, Medline, PsycINFO, and others allow you to save searches and create alerts.
Citation mining is a useful research technique, as it allows you to locate relevant literature by looking at the citations and reference lists of articles you've already found.
Identify the most cited relevant references from the reference list in articles. You can then search for the most cited articles, to see other relevant articles that have also cited these articles. This is useful if you have a scope of, for example, the last 5 years, and find a seminal article outside this date scope.
Search for the seminal article, using the filter of past 5 years, to source articles citing the seminal article that have recently cited this work.
Subject headings are a set of predetermined terms that describe specific concepts. Subject headings are also called controlled vocabularies, index terms, or a thesaurus.
Databases (especially in health) include a thesaurus or subject headings - but not every database utilises subject headings. Databases may have their own subject headings that do not translate to other databases.
In addition to identifying search words and synonyms, search the thesaurus or subject headings list to identify relevant terms in the thesaurus, as these are comprehensive.
Examples of database subject headings:
| Database name | Subject headings |
|---|---|
| CINAHL |
|
| MEDLINE (via PubMed or Ovid), Cochrane |
|
| PsycINFO |
|
Advantages of using subject headings:
Combining subject headings with free-text terms will make your search more comprehensive.
To identify subject headings for your search concepts:
For more information on how to use MeSH:
If you are looking for a particular book, journal article or other resource that is not held in the University Library, you can request to borrow it from another library. For more information, see:
The term grey literature "is usually understood to mean literature that is not formally published in sources such as books or journal articles" (Lefebvre, Manheimer, & Glanville, 2008, p. 106).
Grey literature may include multiple types of document produced on all levels of government and by academics, businesses and organisations in electronic and print formats where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body. (Greynet, 2015.)
Examples are:
There may also be grey literature that is specifically relevant to your discipline. Practice guidelines are highly relevant to nursing and health professions, working papers are used in the social sciences (particularly economics) and patents are important to engineering.
A systematic review conducted in 2008 by members of the Cochrane methodologies team found that the results from grey literature often have a significant effect on the outcome of a review, as they often report more negative or inconclusive data than published journal articles (Hopewell et al., 2008). As such, it is important to treat grey literature as another potential source of studies for inclusion while noting that it is usually not subject to peer review and must be evaluated accordingly.
Government departments (State and Commonwealth) can be found using Google. Some useful sites are listed below:
University repositories, such as the Murdoch Research Portal, can be used to locate theses, research papers and data if they have been made available.
Information about locating theses and dissertations can be found in the Murdoch Library Theses Guide.
Use the Document Type/Source Type/ Publication Type filters to search for specific formats of grey literature.
Conferences
Government
Guidelines & Standards
Statistics
In addition to the sources listed on the previous page, internet searching can locate other useful sources:
When developing a search strategy, specify what type of content is to appear in search results.
Example search words to include:
Internet searches can include file types:
You should evaluate grey literature in the same way as other document types that are included in your research.
The AACODS checklist created by Flinders University is also a useful tool for evaluation and critical appraisal of grey literature.
Your search process must be documented in enough detail to ensure that it can be reported correctly.
For each database search you conduct, you should record:
It may be useful to save your search strategies in the databases you use (where possible) to refer back to later.
Resources such as Medline, Scopus, Web of Science and Cochrane provide this feature.
EndNote software can also be used to record full bibliographical details for each citation and additional notes relating to the selection and evaluation of that source.